By Peter Minde
MOUNT VAN HOEVENBERG, New York — After a cold start to the day, the weather gods smiled for the Keys to the Castle sprint races at Mount van Hoevenberg on Saturday morning. Cloudless sky; warm in the sun, and cool in the shade.
And who won? Hold on, cowboy, it ain’t that simple. Last year, organizers presented overall awards based on skiers’ aggregated times across three heats. This year, to the best of my knowledge, there were no awards. Ergo, no aggregated times. And I chilled at the Ho a long dang time after the racing ended. There do not seem to be posted final results that include times.
[Read more: Ogden, Diggins Win Keys to the Castle Sprints to Kick Off Lake Placid Rollerski Weekend (September 2025)]
Julia Kern of the U.S. Ski Team and SMS dominated the women’s side of the field this year, winning all of her heats. Natalie Nicholas of New Hampshire won two heats, and Green Racing Project’s Quincy Massey-Bierman won one.
On the men’s side, James Langan of Mansfield Nordic and Brian Bushey of GRP each won two heats. Jorgen Pirrung, Mansfield Nordic, and Jack Christner, GRP, each won a heat. Rather than a race, let’s view this as a low-key, super hard workout featuring lunchpail guys unafraid to get their hands dirty. For those who want all the details, I’ve sent Gavin a spreadsheet listing who has what podiums, although even there results are a little iffy. And more broadly, keep in mind that athletes I’ve spoken with in the past regard this weekend as simply another couple of hard workouts, rather than predicting winter results.
The furnace kicked on this morning when I went to make breakfast. Only the second time so far this year. The first time was mid August, because Adirondacks. At 5 a.m., it was a chilly 41 degrees outside (5C). By the time qualification started, the temperature was up to 50 (10 C).
The field was smaller than last year, but it was all quality. Although there were 31 preregistered racers, some scratched. Ava Thurston was seen on the sideline cheering. Having rolled an ankle during a running workout, she opted to skip the sprints and wait for the Climb to the Castle on Sunday.
During qualifying, everyone totally sent it. Pat O’Brien, a GRP assistant coach, measured his skiers’ lactate levels after they crossed the finish line. Among others, one skier tested at 15.5 millimoles after qualifying, and another tested at 20.3.
“We use [lactate testing] as a means of gauging what the cost of the effort is,” O’Brien said. “In that short qualifier, you’ll see very high numbers. For a distance race, you’ll see slightly lower numbers as the workload is more primarily aerobic.” O’Brien would measure his athletes’ lactic acid again following the last heat.
In women’s qualifying, Emma Albrecht of Bridger Ski Foundation came first, in 3:19.5. Julia Kern was second, three seconds back. Haley Brewster of the US Ski team was third fastest in 3:26.7.
The Craftsbury Green Racing Project owned men’s qualifying. Christner of GRP won the men’s qualification in 2:57.7. Following him were Brian Bushey, Joseph Lynch, and John Schwinghamer, in second, third, and fourth respectively. All GRP, all the time.
As with past years, the Castle sprints used the king’s court format. The qual determined which heats athletes would initially start in. Instead of being eliminated if they finished off the pace, athletes would be reseeded up or down into a different heat. There would be two rounds with three heats for both men and women. Heat winners would move up one heat, and last place finishers would move down one heat after each round.
Due to the small field size, women’s heats were originally four persons, and men’s heats would be three persons. However, at the national team coaches’ request, heat sizes were bumped up to make for more realistic scenarios. Three women’s heats ultimately. featured seven athletes.
In the first women’s round, Nicholas of UNH won the tightly contested first heat, with Astrid Longseth, Mansfield Nordic, coming in second, and Kendall Kramer, USST, coming in third.
With everyone tightly grouped, often even on the Grindhouse climb, making a move for the lead isn’t always easy. The pavement is narrower than the terrain that is snow-covered in winter. After the first heat, Nicholas said, “It’s definitely hard to move around, trying to be conscious of not stepping on other people’s equipment, and no one wants to crash on roller skis. At the tops of hills, there’s a little wiggle room, so it’s really fun out there.”
The last and next-to-last corners before the finish looked like the crux moves for the sprint races held here during World Cup Finals. What about today? “[In] my heat just now everything broke up at the top of the big hill [Grindhouse], and then there’s a really good draft coming down this hill,” Nicholas said. “So really, being behind someone for the first half is definitely super helpful.”
In the second women’s heat, everyone skied together over the omega, up Grindhouse, and into the stadium. Kern won a close heat.
In the first heat of the second round, Kramer led GRP’s Quincy Massey-Bierman into the omega downhill. The two had a modest gap on the rest of the heat. In the end, Massey-Bierman took the win from Kramer, with Longstreth third.
In the second heat, Kern led, and opened a modest gap near the top of the Grindhouse. USST coach Matt Whitcomb shouted, “You’ve got three meters, Julia! Make it seven!” Kern took the W, ahead of Emma Albrecht, Bridger Ski Foundation, in second, and Sydney Palmer-Leger, USST / Sun Valley Gold Team, in third. As an aside, the move to Sun Valley for 2026/2027 is new for the peripatetic Palmer-Leger, who was previously affiliated with Mansfield Pro for the 2025/2026 season.
Nicholas and Kern won their respective heats to close out the second round. After the final heat, Kramer told Nordic Insights, “Sprinting is definitely an experiment for me. I’m really working on it. I kept getting better through the rounds, so [it was] really good to knock the rust off.”
Many of the heats were tightly grouped. How did you stake a place in the pack? “There can be a lot of drafting in this course, so maybe that’s why people really tried to stick together as much as they can,” Kramer said. “I was definitely cautious on the downhills because they can be pretty high speed, and so I tried to gain as much time as possible on the uphills. Then better safe than sorry on the downhills, and then catch back up every time we get back to an uphill. I couldn’t afford much tactics.”
For each round, the men’s heats followed the women. With slightly fewer men registered, heat sizes ranged from four to six. In the first round, James Langan, Mansfield Nordic, won the first heat. Teammates Jorgen Pirrung and Gabriel Perchemlides were second and third respectively.
The second men’s heat was tightly grouped until the final turn, when they strung out. Christner took the heat, with GRP teammates Bushey and John Schwinghamer coming second and third.
In the second round, first heat, Max Fey of NYSEF had a 10-meter lead going into the Grindhouse climb. Pirrung reeled him in for the win, with Perchemlides third.
The second heat was a closer affair. Bushey took the win from Christner, with Lynch third.
By the time of the final men’s round, a breeze kicked up in the stadium. Langan took the first heat, followed by Fey and Perchemlides. In the final men’s round, Bushey led into the finish and made it stick, coming ahead of Christner and Lynch, second and third.
After a hard qualifying effort, Charles Ben Oldham, representing UNH, acquitted himself well in the heats. He kindly shared his thoughts on the day. His first term had just started, and today represented the end of a demanding training block. “I think it went well today”, he said. After having spent a good portion of the summer at altitude, “It felt like I needed to work back into sea level pace. The body was feeling better than expected. The muscles were lagging a little bit, but the starts felt good and I felt like I skied the course well. I felt like I applied good focus. The big hill is where I was losing time, so now I know what I need to work on this fall.”
Speaking of big training blocks, this weekend concludes a training camp for the USST women in the Lake Placid area. Julia Kern shared camp scenes on her Instagram, reflecting the current stoke level:
“It’s been a dream of ours for about a year,” Matt Whitcomb told Nordic Insights of the week. With Jessie Diggins and Rosie Brennan retiring, he viewed a women-only camp as a way to reset the team. [If you go back to the mid-teens you have the North American Women’s Training Alliance bringing together top female Americans and Canadians, plus maybe a guest Euro or two, on Eagle Glacier in Alaska, but this is longer ago than I realize now, because I am old. –Ed.]
“We want to fire things back up,” Whitcomb said. “And so the idea is to create another one of these pockets. You know, we saw it with the women a decade ago, led by Kikkan Randall and many others. And now we’re seeing it with our men.
“We feel like as a nation, we do a really good job, when we see these spin-ups, to manage them and to develop them,” Whitcomb continued. “And what we’re trying to do here is to create them. And so, rather than wait for miraculous appearances of talent and energy and buy-in, we really believe that we can engineer it and move forward. It has been an absolute blast.”
A writer recalled a long-ago trip to the Climb to the Castle. Coming from Lake Placid, one turns left at a four-way stop sign in Wilmington, to drive up Whiteface Memorial Highway to the toll gate. One year, a white van stopped just after making that turn, letting out a lone female skier. Did Liz Stephen then proceed to ski the three miles to the toll gate as a warmup? The year she set a course record?
“Yeah, that could be,” Whitcomb said. “We were actually wondering who still has the record. We intend to drop people off pretty low tomorrow again too. Really, I’m not sure if we’ll do it all the way at the Four Corners. Maybe up at Santa’s Workshop [a 1950s-vintage theme park halfway between the Four Corners and the toll gate; see also the Land of Make Believe, in Upper Jay and Frontier Town, in North Hudson], but definitely want to warm up the sort of forward-leaning climbing muscles before they start racing.”
Racing continues tomorrow with the Climb to the Castle. Racing starts at 8 a.m. local time. The projected high of 76 degrees (24.5 C) will likely not be seen on the summit.
Some video: close of a men’s heat, and Max Fey in the qual:
